J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Scotland 1818-20 > Bass Rock and Edinburgh Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Dunbar 1818

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Dunbar’ 1818
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 55 Recto:
Dunbar 1818
D13417
Turner Bequest CLXV 53
Pencil on white laid paper, 99 x 159 mm
Stamped in black ‘CLXV 53’ top right running vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Although these are rather scribbled sketches, they clearly shows the ruins of Dunbar Castle that Turner sketched numerous times in the three 1818 Scottish sketchbooks. The top sketch shows the column-like remains of the castle that are clear in Turner’s Provincial Antiquities illustration, Dunbar, circa 1823 (watercolour, private collection),1 and the sketch at the bottom of the page shows the rocks going out to sea upon which the ruin stands. Although most of the drawings of Dunbar in this sketchbook appear in the first half, there is another sketch on folio 54 (D13415; CLXV 52).

Thomas Ardill
November 2007

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.426 no.1066.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Dunbar 1818 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2007, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-dunbar-r1131963, accessed 25 April 2024.